The buzz: “Sawyer the Robot will work for the equivalent of $4 per day. And he's never in a bad mood. Can you compete with that?” Sawyer is the brainchild of Rodney Brooks, the inventor of robotic vacuum Roomba and PackBot, the robot used to clear bunkers in Iraq and Afghanistan and at the World Trade Center after 9/11. (newsweek.com)

No matter how far Industry 4.0 automation goes, manufacturers will ALWAYS need humans to fill roles that cannot be automated – completing complex tasks and making intuitive decisions. The key is to define what roles do and don’t need human intervention. The goal: augment humans with Industry 4.0, not replace them. AI doesn’t take the person out of the process, it takes the robot out of the person. As the degree of automation increases, so does decision-making complexity.

We’ll ask W. David Stephenson at Stephenson Strategies and Richard Howells at SAP for their insights on Industry 4.0: Augmenting Humans to Empower Productivity and Decision-Making.